There’s a better way

In the Pro/Con editorials on energy policy on Tuesday, readers of the CDT were offered only extreme opposites.

The choice Americans face is dramatic, all right, but it is not a choice between government seizure of the energy sector, on the one hand, and doing flat nothing on the other.

The first solution simply ignores the Constitution and the law. The second ignores the persistent failure to price fossil fuels accurately, so that the price reflects the hidden costs of their damage to the earth’s climate. There are many better solutions than these, and they all lie in the non-extremist middle.

The non-partisan Citizens’ Climate Lobby, of which I am a member, advocates placing a fee on fossil fuels when they come out of the ground and returning all the revenue raised that way directly to the people, in equal parts, so that individuals can choose in the free market what to spend the money on.